


drift off course in a ship touching hearts

by Myargalargan



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Awkward Sexual Situations, Dorks in Love, Episode: s03e16 The Southern Raiders, F/M, Grinding, Making Out, Missing Scene, One Shot, Romantic Fluff, Sexual Tension, Sokka's Tent o' Love, possibly too many metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:01:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24297022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myargalargan/pseuds/Myargalargan
Summary: Suki and Sokka indulge in a moment of intimacy. Takes place during/after the infamous tent scene in Southern Raiders. Featuring semi-awkward exploration of half-naked bodies, including Suki being a confident and forward lady, and Sokka's first time touching a boob.
Relationships: Sokka/Suki (Avatar)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 135





	drift off course in a ship touching hearts

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically 5k words of pure self-indulgence... Y'all, I haven't written a fic in over 10 years! But after a recent re-watch of ATLA, I became obsessed with Sokka and Suki and their perfect love, and this story would not leave me alone until I wrote it. So, please accept my humble offering, which I leave on the altar at the Shrine of Sukka. 
> 
> Title comes from a song performed by Kyoshi in the F. C. Yee novel "The Rise of Kyoshi," which I haven't read but found out about on the Avatar Wiki.
> 
> "I've got hair like the starless night  
> It sticks to my lips when I smile  
> I'll wind it with yours and we'll drift off course  
> In a ship touching hearts all the while"

“Sokka?” she hissed from just outside his tent, but there was no response. 

Sokka had asked her to come by once everyone else had gone to bed, for some “special Sukka alone time.” (“You know, Sukka...Suki plus Sokka...it’s our names smushed together!” he’d explained when she’d raised her eyebrow at him.) But after she’d bumped into Zuko, she’d given the tent a wide berth so the boys could have whatever guy-talk Zuko had needed so late at night. 

To kill time, she’d walked out to the cliffs. When the salty ocean spray on the breeze reminded her of home, she’d forced away the tight ball that had clenched underneath her sternum. Her girls were out there somewhere, but she’d told herself that fighting alongside the Avatar gave her the best chance of helping them. And if she wanted to take a brief moment to celebrate her newfound freedom from prison with the really cute boy who’d rescued her, well...she didn’t need to feel guilty about that. 

This was the first stretch of time they would have just the two of them since...ever, really. The night they’d escaped from Boiling Rock, she and Sokka had sat close to each other around the fire at the Western Air Temple while eating dinner. They’d even kissed a little, stealing a tiny moment to themselves beside the water fountain while everyone else set up camp. But they’d had no real privacy, especially since Hakoda had been there. 

Oh, she and Hakoda got along well enough, and she could tell the Water Tribe chieftain was at least impressed with her martial arts training if nothing else, but there was no way she was going to slip her boyfriend tongue in the vicinity of his father. They hadn’t even put their sleeping bags next to each other, using Katara as a buffer to avoid any possible suspicion of untoward behavior. The most suggestive thing to happen all evening was Sokka stumbling over his regret that she was stuck with her prison outfit when he said, “It’s too bad we can’t get you out of these clothes. I mean- into something more comfortable! I mean…!”

Despite Hakoda’s presence making her extra nervous about her behavior around Sokka that night, she had to admit that it was...very interesting to see what the younger Water Tribesman might look like in another twenty or so years. If she and Sokka stuck with each other that long, her future self would definitely not be disappointed. 

But now, she was hesitating outside the entrance to Sokka’s tent, listening to be sure Zuko had left. She couldn’t hear anything inside — no movement, no voices — but instead of being reassured, her nerves peaked. What if Sokka had gone to sleep, thinking their night ruined after Zuko came by? What if he and Zuko had talked about something really serious and Sokka was no longer in the mood to see her? 

Taking a steadying breath, she pulled back the flap of the tent and just barely poked her head into the opening.

“Sokka?”

“Suki!”

Sokka had been on his knees adjusting his bedroll, but his face split into a massive grin when he saw her, and he scrambled up to pull her inside. That’s when she saw what he’d done for them: candles all around the perimeter casting everything in a romantic glow, several armfuls of roses hanging from the canopy. 

“Oh, Sokka… Look at all this! You are such a sweetheart.” Overwhelmed, she brushed her mouth against his, feathersoft.

“Aren’t I though?” He grinned, looking quite pleased with himself, hands perched on his hips. But then he turned serious. “You really like it?”

“It’s lovely. Thank you. And I’m so glad I got to see it. When I ran into Zuko outside I thought maybe we wouldn’t get the chance to do this after all.”

“Zuko saw you? Coming here?”

“Yeah. He said he wanted to talk to you, so I skedaddled as fast as I could. It was a little embarrassing...I tried to pretend like I was at the wrong tent, but I don’t think he bought it.”

“Oh, then...there’s definitely no way he bought it after he came in here.” 

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he...well...he just walked right in and I thought it was you and I had a rose in my mouth and-”

“A _rose_ in your _mouth_?”

“I was trying to be charming!”

“Sokka!” she covered her mouth as she laughed, trying and failing to keep a straight face. “Now I don’t feel so embarrassed about my run-in with him anymore.”

Sokka was pouting a little now, so she leaned over to kiss his forehead.

“And you’re plenty charming, even without the rose in your mouth, you tomcat owl.”

When that didn’t pull him out of his pout, she changed tack.

“What did Zuko want to talk about, anyway?”

“Katara.”

“Oh?” Suki asked, her eyebrows shooting up.

“No, not like that. At least, I don’t think so…” Sokka’s eyes narrowed as he thought about it, thought back on their conversation, his eyebrows and mouth flattening to straight, disapproving lines. “No…” he continued, shaking his head to clear away the unwelcome image, “he wanted to talk about our mother, to find out how she died. Katara keeps throwing it in his face, and he thinks he knows something that’ll help him make good with her.”

“Sokka, I’m sorry, that must’ve been awful. Are you okay?”

He slumped forward and sighed, looking defeated for a moment, but then he looked up at her and brightened.

“Yeah. Really,” he interrupted when her face twisted with doubt. “It sucks to talk about, but I just...don’t want to think about that right now. You’re here, and there are so many other things I’d rather be doing. We’ve already lost enough time thanks to Prince Broodypants.”

He reached out to cup her cheek in one hand, and his expression was so earnest and full that Suki had no choice but to open and sink. This time when they kissed, Suki lingered, indulging in the slide of their lips and how he smiled against her. He was warm and smelled like their campfire, alive and vital in a way the steel of Boiling Rock hadn’t been, despite its volcanic heat. She sighed into the kiss, sliding her arms over and around his shoulders to pull him as close as possible, and then turned her head to tuck her face into his neck. When she pressed her lips to his pulse point, tasting salt and smoke, his breath hitched slightly, and she reveled in that, too. Thinking of this had kept her sane in that forsaken fortress.

“It’s nice, huh?” he said, voice pitched low, “To kiss when we’re not saying goodbye.”

“Mmm… And when your dad’s not around.”

“Ugh...please do not mention my dad right now.”

She laughed against his throat, squeezing him tighter, and then dragged her nose up the tendon along the side of his neck as she breathed him in, saturating her senses with Sokka, Sokka, Sokka. She could feel his pulse quicken as much as she could hear the matching quickening of his breath, and her stomach fluttered in anticipation. 

“You know,” she said, reaching out to run her fingers through his hair. She scruffed the soft, shorter hairs at the back of his head, and he leaned into her touch like a puppy getting its ears scratched. “I don’t think I mentioned before, but I like your hair like this.”

“Oh yeah?” he preened.

“Oh yeah… And this outfit,” one hand trailed down his bicep while the other alighted just above his knee. “It’s pretty sexy.”

She could tell he was trying to retain his bravado, but his face had turned crimson and he was struggling to come up with a response. Giving up, he leaned in to capture her mouth, and there was an urgency in this kiss that hadn’t been there before. 

“I’ll show you sexy.”

His voice was a bit of a growl, and he’d said it without even taking his lips off of hers, and it all was, in fact, desperately sexy, but it still made her laugh. She was full of delight — at him, at their situation — and it burst out of her in that laugh. She threw her arms around his shoulders again, and his came around her waist, and she said, “Oh baby, you better,” and they laughed into each other, chuckling and smiling against the join of their mouths.

Sokka had no idea what he’d done to deserve this girl, or this moment with her. Being with Suki was like that one time he’d been stuck in that crevice, if the crevice had been made of beauty, compassion, and someone who appreciated his sense of humor. He was gripping her waist, thumbs idly caressing her ribs, thinking about how perfectly the curve of her fit underneath his palms, when the tip of her tongue skimmed along his upper lip. He parted his lips to meet her, and the wet slide, tentative as it was, sent a tremor through his whole body. They kissed like that, tongues flirting, until Suki went deeper, circling Sokka’s tongue with her own in a slow seduction. He groaned, a helpless surrender, and went lightheaded when all of his blood rushed south. 

As he tried to match her, he dragged his hands up and down her sides. He wanted to touch her, to feel her, everywhere. Each sweep of his hands brought them higher until he was gripping her just below her armpits, and without really thinking about it, his thumbs grazed the sides of her breasts. At Suki’s sharp intake of breath, Sokka pulled back immediately, lowering his hands to her waist again. When he saw her face, though, she looked enraptured. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, gleaming a dark indigo, her mouth open and glistening in the candlelight. Sokka gulped.

“Are you okay?” he asked. It came out as a rasp.

“Yes,” she nodded, licking her lips with just the tip of her tongue. “More than okay.”

“Is it…” he swallowed. “Is it okay if I touch you? Here?” He lifted his hands up to her breasts but hovered inches above her body.

She nodded again, sucking her bottom lip between her teeth. Heat roiled along his skin. His hands trembled slightly as he lowered them, and his breath shuddered out of him, sinking into a whine once he was touching her. Not quite sure what to do from there, he began massaging her gently.

“Oh wow…” He squeezed one breast, then the other, eyes wide with wonder. “Wow, Suki... You’re so soft!” 

She laughed, and his hands froze.

“Of course, silly! What did you expect?”

He frowned a bit, more of a crease between his eyebrows than a downturn of his mouth. 

“Well, it’s just...the rest of you is so...tight and...firm! I...you just feel different here. It’s not- these are all good things! You feel good everywhere!”

Her eyes were still laughing when she took his face between her hands and kissed him first on the cheek, then on the mouth. 

“Thank you, Sokka.”

His face was on fire, but he set his mouth and his shoulders, determined.

“Does it feel good to you? When I touch you here?” and he resumed his massage.

She closed her eyes as she considered, while he moved his hands against her in a sort of circular motion, fingers pressing in an unsteady rhythm. Holding her like this...it was an amazing mix of comforting — she was _so soft_ , he just wanted to nuzzle up against her — and invigorating — she was _so enticing_ , maybe when he nuzzled up against her he would take her into his mouth and-

But he wanted to make it feel good for her, too, so he tried to focus more on her and less on the tightening in his lower belly.

“Yeah,” she finally said, opening her eyes after a few moments of nothing but the sound of their breaths. “I mean...not so much when you just squeeze them, but when you move your fingers-”

Watching her closely, he brushed his thumbs over her.

“Yes, that’s better, that’s-”

He went slightly lower, running the pad of his thumb over the peak of her, and she gasped. He tried again, applying a bit more pressure, and when her eyes fluttered closed and her breathing quickened, he felt something savage and primal flare up in him. He did it again, this time dragging his thumbs in a tight circle around that peak, and Suki’s breath cracked on a broken moan, and Sokka was certain he would die from the lack of oxygen in his brain.

“Sokka...kiss me…”

He surged towards her, crushing their lips together, and then she was all over him. Her arms tightened around his shoulders, and her tongue plunged into his mouth, stoking flames. The moan tore out of him, loud, and that fire inside him blazed. Everything he touched should’ve been igniting by now. 

He was quite enjoying the mix of sensations — the soft weight of her in his palms, the scrape of her teeth on his lips, even the insistent throbbing between his legs that he was sort of trying to ignore. Sokka was never one for meditation, but he understood now the power of being present in the moment. There was nothing else but the two of them, the brush and the burn of body against body, mouth against mouth. 

Then Suki’s hands were gone, and he stumbled out of his reverie. Before he could figure out what she was doing, she’d gripped his wrists and shoved them down, under the hemline of her tunic where she’d bunched it up to her hips. After a moment of restarting his internal systems, he began to trail his hands upward, breath catching when skin met skin. When he didn’t encounter any resistance slipping his hands back up to her breasts, he realized she must’ve removed the sash from around her waist, and goodness, wasn’t she just so smart and so clever. He hummed appreciatively. 

They broke apart, but stayed close enough for their breaths to mingle, foreheads touching, and Suki’s world narrowed down to Sokka’s fingertips. As his hands moved up her body, his calluses lightly scraped at her skin, which tingled, then warmed, like little fires sparking. He kept his fingers teasing as they dragged over the undergarments on her chest, but still she trembled at the sensation, his touch penetrating deep within her. Then he cupped her, and the sturdiness of his hands was an answer to a plea, but she wanted more, needed more. 

“Sokka…”

She drove her hands out, found where his tunic was open against his throat, and slid her hands under the collar. She tugged on his shoulder, coaxing their lips back together, and then drew her hands downward over his collarbone, across the planes of his chest. He was hard, and so, so warm, and all she could think about was pushing herself against him and feeling him everywhere.

She broke the kiss to peel her own tunic off, sitting before Sokka topless except for the cloth around her breasts. His eyes bulged, but before he had time to do anything else, she shifted back towards him and threw a leg over his lap. She’d barely settled against him, barely registered the press of her core against his, when he squealed.

Startled, Suki scrambled back, leaning away so no part of them was touching. 

“Are you okay? Was that too much?”

“Yes...I mean, no… I mean…” Too many questions. “I want to be close to you. I really, really do. I just...have a bit of a situation going on here,” he explained, gesturing vaguely to his lap.

Suki tilted her head to one side, lips pursed. Given that was exactly what she’d been angling for, she wasn’t sure why there was an issue. 

“Why, isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?” she asked, crawling back towards him.

“I guess, but it’s...embarrassing, isn’t it? I don’t want you to be weirded out.”

She smiled indulgently and lifted a hand to his cheek.

“Sokka… I’m not at all weirded out. I think it’s really flattering that I can turn you on like that. And you being turned on also really turns me on.”

“R-Really?” he squeaked.

“Yes.” She kissed him sweetly. “That...and you touching me.”

His eyes flashed, and he grinned.

“Really?” The timbre of his voice had warmed, thickened. 

There were times when his confidence was genuine and effortless, when he wasn’t posturing but was acting with self-assurance, and those were the times he was irresistible to her. She’d seen that side of him when they first met on Kyoshi Island, after they’d spent the day training together. She saw that side of him now as he reached for her. 

He lowered his face towards hers, and just as she was tilting her chin up to meet his lips, he pulled away, sweeping instead around her jaw, just below her ear. He grazed his teeth on the sensitive skin there, and her head tipped back automatically so he could have as much of her as possible. At the same time, his hands slid around to her lower back, pressing into the curve just above her tailbone, leading her into a delicate backbend. Taking advantage of the bow of her body, he dragged his teeth down, down, down her neck, over her collarbone. As his mouth moved across the subtle swell of her breast, Suki suddenly felt her breath crowding in her lungs. 

“Is this alright?” Sokka asked, pausing to simply rest his face against her, moving along with the hectic rise and fall of her chest. 

“Yes.” It was a sigh, and it released some of the tension, but still her whole body was taut, like she was overfilled with sensation, and her head was roaring.

His hands crept up her sides again and stopped with his thumbs caressing just below the curve of her breasts. 

“Should I… Do you want me to keep going?”

She pulled back to steady herself. His hands trailed slowly down her waist as she moved back, and he contented himself by resting them on her hips and thumbing the subtle jut of her pelvic bones. 

His eyes were so dark when she looked at them, the pupils wide, the bright blue of them barely visible in the flickering light. His ochre skin glowed bronze from the candles and from the flush radiating off his body. It was beautifully intoxicating, and again she thought, “ _More…_ ”

“Hold on,” she told him, which could have meant “hold on to me” or “hold on, don’t move.” He did both as she spread her hands over him, pushing underneath his tunic again. This time when she smoothed her hands across his chest, she took the tunic with her, drawing it over his shoulders. Pausing, she looked back at his face, saw him watching her intensely through his lashes. 

“Can I?”

He nodded, and she slipped his tunic the rest of the way down his arms, enjoying how his lean muscles clenched under her touch. Her hands made their way back up and over his shoulders, trailing down his front and, curious, she lightly scraped her nails over his nipples. When he whimpered quietly in response, her belly jumped and filled with a slow, delicious warmth.

“Oh…” she murmured, suddenly transfixed.

“What?” Sokka asked, and the note of self-consciousness in his voice brought her back to herself.

“Nothing. I mean, I just wasn’t expecting…” She thumbed his nipples again and this time felt his abdominal muscles quiver as he shuddered. “I like that quite a bit.”

He laughed, a quick, baffled “ha!”, and brought one hand to his face, scrubbing while he regarded her with one eye.

“Well, that’s lucky, since I guess I do, too!”

She giggled at him, resting the crown of her head against his chest as she held onto his sides. That breath-catching tension from before whooshed out of her, and instead she was overcome with such bubbling affection for him that all she could do was press forward, burrowing her head against his chest, as if to meld her entire self with him. 

Sokka lowered the hand that had been covering his face to run his fingers over her hair. At the gesture, Suki sat back just enough to turn her head up and gaze at him from the level of his chest. Her eyes were sparkling, with mirth or candlelight or both, and Sokka's heart squeezed and sang like home. Then she lowered her head again to press her lips to his chest, and his whole body throbbed. His skin grew fevered as she planted wet kisses all over him. She was sucking his skin lightly with every kiss, and each time she separated from him with that little _‘smack’_ sound, the pressure between his legs grew. Just as Sokka was reaching transcendence, blissed out and one with the ground swell in his head and his limbs and his core, he felt Suki’s tongue swipe over one of his nipples. His entire body jerked in surprised arousal.

“Holy spirits, Suki!” he gasped.

She hummed in approval — or was that her own moan of pleasure? — and did it again. His head fell back on a groan.

Suki had taught him so much since they’d met. She’d taught him how to redirect an opponent’s attack, she’d taught him about respect and humility towards other cultures, and now, as she licked her way from one pectoral to the other, she was teaching him that he had some seriously sensitive nipples. How he hadn’t burst into flame by now, he had no idea. 

When she stopped, he thought maybe it was because his chest was heaving dangerously close to hyperventilation. But then he tipped his head down to look at her, and her eyes were wild and ravenous. She wasn’t giving him a break; she was adjusting her strategy. His adrenaline spiked. 

“Sokka, I want to try something.” And he was nodding and agreeing to it before he knew what she wanted. “Could you lie down?”

He dropped onto his back immediately. 

Suki rose to her knees and swung one leg over his body again, straddling his stomach.

“Okay?” she asked him, and he nodded eagerly.

Then she reached up and began removing her chest covering, and Sokka choked. His hands twitched, and Suki saw and said, “Wait, stay still a minute.” When she was done, completely bare from the waist up, she lowered herself so she was chest-to-chest and skin-to-skin with Sokka. 

The feel of her was exquisite. Nearly every inch of her was pressing into him, from her arms draped over his shoulders and bracing herself on the floor, to her thighs which were bracketed around his hips. It was somehow both satisfying and maddening. Like he’d been granted some divine gift but was already greedy for more. The heat where their hips met was precisely where he needed to be, and he could sense himself straining towards it. With no small effort, he kept himself still, not certain exactly what Suki wanted out of their new position. But he was so piquantly aware of her, of every little movement, every undulating breath that changed where and how she pressed into him, every millimeter she shifted as she settled more deeply against him. 

“Suki...god…” He could swear her body was thrumming. Revving. 

“I know…”

“Was this…” His voice was so tight. “Is this what you wanted to try? Or...or was there something else? Because let me tell you, you could ask me for absolutely anything right now and I’d say yes.”

She huffed out a laugh, though her voice sounded just as tight as his when she said, “Yeah? How about this?”

Then she began to rock, and the friction was like flint and steel. 

“Yes.” It was a hiss.

His hands wanted to be everywhere. He gripped her upper arms where they were enveloping his head, streaked down to her waist just to savor the dip and slope, fumbled helplessly at the sides of her breasts where they were crushed to his chest, and grasped at her hips as they rolled against his. His fingers clenched in between her ribs, clamped around her flexing shoulder blades, drove into her hair. Suki was moaning and writhing above him, breathing heavily into his mouth, and he felt like he was being thrashed in a rip tide.

She pulled away from him abruptly with a stilted gasp, then lowered her forehead to his collarbone, her nose buried in his sternum. Her body tightened around his, her movements quickened. Ruled by instinct, his hands dug into her hips and _tugged_ , spurring her on as her rhythm stuttered. He heard her cry out, muffled against his skin, and he groaned, thoroughly pulled under with her. 

The full-body grip she had on him relaxed, and she panted out a few breaths, and everything inside Sokka tightened and honed as realization crashed into him.

“Fuck fuck fuck…” he breathed, frantic and restless as Suki’s body, still rocking against his, drove him up and up and up some seemingly endless peak. “Suki, did you just-?”

“Mm hmm,” she murmured into his neck.

“Fuck…”

He was scrabbling against her, questing for something, something...and then Suki leaned up and breathed into his ear, “Sokka, let go,” and he erupted, first throwing his head back, then curling into her, arms banded around her and pulling her as tightly against himself as he could manage. His hips thrust against hers in a slowing pace as he came down, his strength siphoning from him with every jolt until the only thing left of him was his trembling arms caged around Suki’s torso and his ragged breath tearing out of his lungs.

“Suki…” he finally managed after a brief sojourn into what Sokka assumed was his own version of the Avatar state.

“Mm?”

“Suki… Suki, I think I died. I can’t feel my body. Am I in the spirit world? Can you feel your body in the spirit world?”

She chuckled at him and pressed a few nibbling kisses to his jawline. She hadn’t spent nearly enough time enjoying the sharp curve of bone and muscle here, she thought. It was quite a nice little corner.

“Can you feel that?” she asked.

Sokka sighed, the kind of sigh she imagined he’d make when lowering himself into a luxurious hot spring.

“Yeah… Mmm… Thank goodness. If I’d died and we could never do _that_ again…” 

He trailed off, and Suki indulged in one last nip at his jaw before levering herself onto her arms, which she crossed over Sokka’s chest so she could look down at him. His eyes were closed, a lazy smile spread across his face. But then his expression soured. 

A sobering thought occurred to her, and must have occurred to him, too, about how much — or rather, how little — time they might have left together. She shook her head, pushed it down like she had her earlier sadness about home. This was her time, _their_ time. Sokka was solid and real beneath her, the pulsing energy of him seeping into her where his arms still looped around her torso and where their bellies still pressed against each other. That was what mattered right now, not ghostly ‘maybes’ and ‘might haves’. 

Seeing his frown, she pressed a thumb into the crease at the corner of his mouth and kissed him, hard. She tried to make the kiss say everything that she didn’t dare voice out loud. “ _We’ll make it_ ,” it said. “ _We can have a lifetime of this,”_ it said. And, “ _We are_ not _kissing goodbye, not now, not again._ ” She kissed him until he was humming against her, until his tongue was sweeping into her mouth, until there was nothing left inside of her but him. 

She pulled away and told him, “We should do this again as soon as possible.” It was the biggest promise she felt she could safely say. Mouth now free, Sokka used the opportunity to pepper kisses everywhere else he could reach — her cheeks, her neck, her collarbone. 

“Mmm, how about right now? Is now good for ya?” he asked between kisses on her jaw, her chin, the sensitive flesh at the very top of her throat.

“I don’t know about you, but I could use some time to catch my breath.” But she craned her neck anyway to give him plenty of space to work with. 

“You scaled a 60-foot wall to take a man twice your size hostage without even breaking a sweat, but _now_ you need a breather?”

She grinned. “This was a little more intense than capturing the warden.”

And oh, he looked so damn _satisfied_ , a proud pygmy puma with a sparrowkeet in its claws.

“Alright, hotshot,” she teased, shoving at his shoulder and settling next to him. 

She kept her hand on him, sliding it up to rest in the crook of his neck, and he moved along with her, as if tethered, so they were on their sides facing each other. Sokka grimaced as he shifted, and when Suki raised her eyebrows at him, he turned bright red. 

“I, uh...it’s just as well, I guess. I’ve got a, uh...well I’ve made a bit of a...mess…here...” he stammered, tugging awkwardly at his shorts with another wince. 

Suki sucked her lips in between her teeth. Sokka blushing and flailing around trying to get comfortable had a giggle spilling out of her, but at the same time, imagining exactly what he was referring to had her flushing all over. She squeezed at his shoulder to get his attention and then lowered her eyelids halfway.

“Actually, I think maybe I’ve caught my breath already.”

It took a couple seconds for what she said to register, but once it did, his discomfort was forgotten. Sokka leaned in to seal their lips once more, drawing Suki against him firmly, and every part of her fit so well that it wasn’t worth thinking about anything else. There would be time later to deal with his pants, just as there would be time to fight the Fire Lord, and take back the Earth Kingdom, and rescue the Kyoshi Warriors, and restore balance to the world. There would be time for worrying about their future -- the future of the four nations, of all their friends’ lives, of their own relationship. There was plenty of time for all that, later. But right now, it was just them. 

**Author's Note:**

> re: "tomcat owl", I wanted Suki to playfully call Sokka something like "Casanova" but didn't think such a term would exist in the Avatar universe. My husband suggested something like "hound dog" but using one of their weird hybrid animals, which I thought was hilarious, but I'm still not sure it translated.
> 
> Also, no hate meant at all to Zutara fans in that first part! Sokka's reaction to Suki's "Oh?" is just him being a protective older brother. ;)


End file.
